Central air conditioning systems treat air in central air conditioning plants and convey the treated air through ducts to ventilators from which the air is diffused into rooms. Central heating systems do the same, except that the treatment of the air is in a heating plant. It is well known that some central treatment plants both heat and cool and can be regulated to provide air at a desired temperature. Thus, either system or a combined system may be used, depending on the temperature within a room, to bring comfort to human occupants.
Treated air is generally blown into a room under the influence of a blower system, usually housed in the central plant. Once introduced into the room, the treated air rapidly loses momentum generated by the blower system. Thus, the treated air is left to convective currents within the room.
Ventilators may be located at floors, baseboards, and ceilings. As cool air falls and warm air rises, the former locations, those near or at the floor, prove to be efficient for heating, while the latter location proves to be efficient for cooling.
The present invention focuses on the problem arising out of the architectural design of rooms with combination central heating and cooling systems, particularly with rooms designed for central heating systems which subsequently were converted into the combined systems. Many such rooms have ventilators and exhaust grate locations that were designed so that heated air is introduced into a room at lower elevations where it is beneficial to the occupants of the room as it rises to settle near the ceiling where either it is exhausted through an exhaust intake located near the ceiling before it is cooled, or it eventually falls after cooling into the proximity of an exhaust intake at a lower elevation. Such systems operate with a cooling cycle that has cool air being let in at the lower elevations where after a time it builds up while heated air is exhausted from a higher elevation or it is immediately exhausted from the room at the lower elevation without having served to cool the occupants of the room.